Insecure Writer's Support Group

It's that time again!

I had a nice post all planned out, but then I ran out of time due to work stuff and other things. So then I had some nice motivational pictures to get you all happy and writing but then EFFING Blogger wouldn't let me upload them.

Seriously, Blogger is on my shitlist right now.

Sigh. I'll try again in a bit, on a different PC to see if that makes a difference. Because this is one sad looking post with no pics to spruce it up.

So I guess what this post is getting at is, please check back later for some writerly support.

OR, just remember that you can do it. And I believe in you.

In Which Blogger Switches Things Up

Has anyone played around with the new blogger interface?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, blogger rolled out a new interface for the dashboard about a week ago. You can try it out by clicking on the "Try the Updated Blogger Interface" Link. Don't worry you can switch back.

It looks something like this:

I haven't really given it a try beyond just a few looks. Mostly because just with those few glances I decided I'm not crazy about it. I'm also not crazy about trying to figure out where everything is again.

But, I realize I may be acting unfairly since I haven't actually used it. Has anyone else given it a test run? Do you like it? Not like it? Why or why not?

OK update: I've played around with it a bit. It's going to take some getting used to, especially regarding some weird format stuff but one of the things I absolutely LOVE is when you "preview" your post now, it actually opens it as a separate window and shows what it will look like on your actual blog. So it's a true preview.

In Which I Revise Backwards

(OT - is anyone else having blogger formatting issues? It now makes me code with html all my paragraph breaks and hard returns. It makes me want to punch every bee in the face.

Sorry. Onto the real post.)

So whenever you read articles or books about revising, almost always people will tell you the same, or similar, thing:

Do the big stuff first, then the little stuff. Which, for the most part, makes sense. I mean, it would stink to do a whole bunch of line edits, then change things around and have to re-do the line edits.

So, logical. But that's not for me. I mean, first off, I rarely have to make any huge changes. Or at least, I have yet to have to do so.

Sure, I may delete a few scenes here or there, or maybe need to add some scenes but nothing massive and crazy. And certainly no huge amounts of rewriting. You know how I feel about that.

This is probably because I'm an outliner, and once I have that story structure built, I don't realy veer that much from it.

SO, because of this fact, I tend to revise backwards. That is, I line edit first. Crazy? Maybe. But I can't stand moving scenes around if there's clunky prose and typos.

Also, I tend to revise as I write as well. Once I've written my bit for the day, then I read back over it and fix it up some. Since I'm a sloppy typer, there are always things that need fixing - so I don't end up with typos like "She had long, stinking back hair" when I meant to write "She had long, striking black hair".

True Story.

Anyway, that is why I line edit first. Maybe sometimes I end up editing something that I then later delete, but you know what? I'm OK with that.

What about you? Anyway you break the revision mold?

In Which I Interrupt My Normal Blog Schedule

To pass on this important information!

I saw this on Holly's page and realized right away that she was right, it was the most important blog post I read ALL DAY!

Google created a “Make Blogger Better” site. What is this, you ask? Well, it's where you can vote on ideas and give your own suggestions to google regarding blogger.

Important ideas.

For reals.

You can either vote on already submitted ideas, or create your own.

One of the main ideas I voted on was

Threaded comments.

Do you know how awesome it would be to be able to reply to each comment on a blog? It would be so much easier to create a dialogue.

Another two ideas I submitted were:

The ability to comment through google reader (oh it would be such a time saver)
The ability to delete a post from google reader (for when we have that accidental post before the blog entry is actually finished. So embarrassing).

So head on over and vote! This is your chance to help make blogger an even better service to serve our little community!

VOTE HERE!